Local Business Leaders to Advise the Mayor of Ways to Improve Albuquerque’s Business Climate

Deep Dives: Mayor Berry to Hold Business Development Meetings

June 12, 2014

Albuquerque- The City is hoping to utilize the experience and knowledge of local business owners to improve the climate for commerce and success. Over the next few weeks Mayor Berry is facilitating a series of meetings with local small business owners in order to help identify ways to enhance, foster, and support small business formation and growth in Albuquerque.

The Mayor is asking local small businesses and microenterprise owners to help identify actions based on their own knowledge and experience that can improve the overall climate in the city to help form, strengthen and grow microenterprise and small business locally. Attendees will span from Business owners who have a successful business, are just starting out, or have closed their business.

“There is a wealth of knowledge in our business community. I want our city to be able to use the experiences of local business leaders to create a more prosperous Albuquerque,” said Mayor Berry. “We want to help accelerate the growth of local businesses poised to create new quality jobs, and enhance the conditions necessary for local business to thrive.”

The series of meetings will give small business entrepreneurs the opportunity to speak with the Mayor about the challenges, roadblocks, and obstacles they faced in starting a business in Albuquerque, and will also discuss what resources helped them along the way. The goal is to identify common problems areas and as well as potential opportunities, the actions to address these areas will be part of Albuquerque’s Living Cities Integration Initiative.

Today’s meeting, hosted by Accion, was the first of a series of meetings that will be hosted at different locations around the city. The next meeting is scheduled to take place on June 16th at WESST.

Living Cities is an innovative collaborative of 22 of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions, they have selected Mayor Richard Berry’s office to head up a team of local leaders and institutions in an Integration Initiative designed to improve economic mobility for residents, facilitate job creation, advance education and generally improve and strengthen the local economy with a focus on downtown revitalization.